Eric Ravenscraft

Nearly everyone's had that one (or more) first job that was awful. Not just a job you didn't enjoy, but one that was underpaid, overworked, and probably disgusting. The conventional wisdom, though, is that you build skills with those jobs. So, what did you learn?

Most people don't apply to be a cashier in the hopes of moving up to a six-figure STEM field. While certainly learning how to operate a register or keep track of inventory is useful at the moment, the social skills for dealing with your crummy boss or figuring out how to balance your time between work and school can be more useful in the long run.

We want to hear from you, though. What was your first job? What did you learn there that helped your career over the long run? Did a seemingly-unrelated job end up teaching you something valuable that you might not have otherwise learned?